The Chance to Love This Much
by Malvolia
Summary: Today Kate feels that good will come from ashes. Set after Series 3.


She'd known him less than half a year, liked him less time than that, but it feels to Kate that she lived a lifetime loving Robin Hood so much.

This grief is different from the grief she felt when her brother Matthew died. There is nobody left to hate this time, nobody left to take her revenge upon. The sheriff—both sheriffs—are charred bits of a thousand pieces by now, and that fact smothers the flames of her pain.

And Robin walking away from them makes it feel as though he might just as soon be coming back, and Robin found sitting peacefully against the tree makes it look like he's sleeping, and neither is as scarring as watching him run through in front of her.

And in the way he held her before he left, and despite his apology for having to leave them, in that moment she could feel his heart had reverted to Marian.

And because she stays with these people, as she didn't stay with her mother and sister, she finds out this time what it is to grieve with family—to feel both weaker and better together, to stifle a sob in the night only to hear another from across the way, to sit beside someone and know that his heart is also missing a piece now.

Not that there is ample time for grief. The destruction of the castle of Nottingham leaves a vacuum of power in the region that cries out to be filled, and the gang—still Robin Hood's gang—steps in to make sure all contenders have their say and all citizens their voice. They join in clearing the debris from Nottingham Town, helping to find what can still be used in the rubble. They coordinate food deliveries and hang hammocks between trees for the townsfolk who find themselves homeless and without their livelihoods.

It is only at night, in the sanctuary of the hideout, that there is room to grieve. Too much room, even with Archer sleeping in Robin's old bunk, because he _isn't_ Robin, is he, and because of Allan, whose death hurt even more than Robin's did, in a way, because they had told Robin everything they needed him to hear and Allan received the opposite.

"You'll find another leader," Robin had told Tuck, and maybe John in all his disagreements with the way Robin had handled things in the past and his added years of life as an outlaw feels the same way, and certainly Archer couldn't possibly care a great deal, but Kate and Much don't want another leader, they want _Robin_.

The leadership vacuum has resolved itself in the camp in a fragmenting of Robin's gifts. Archer has stepped into Robin's shoes as the daring planner, Tuck as the disciplined coordinator, John as the battle tactician, and Much…. Well, he may not have Robin's way with words, his flair for the dramatic, but he has his heart, and his loyalty, and from little things she hears from John, Kate begins to suspect that it was Much, more than even Marian, who'd kept the hero grounded.

She spends a lot of time with Much these days, helping him with the camp chores, not because she's a woman and that's all she can be expected to do now, but because he loved Robin, too, more than the others loved him, and because that makes it seem even more like Robin is just going to come walking back over the hill any minute.

One afternoon as winter approaches, Kate brings an armload of wood to the cooking fire in time to see Much shiver and pull his hood up.

"Want me to get your hat?"

He only shakes his head in reply, and she realizes she hasn't seen him wearing his hat since Robin took it off, not once, even though there have been some quite cold nights in the forest since then.

She picks up a long stick and pokes it aimlessly at the fire.

"Robin freed me," says Much.

"From the dungeons?" asks Kate. Once she had stumbled across Much bathing in the river and before she had a chance to turn away she'd seen some nasty scars on his midsection that looked suspiciously like branding. Besides, everyone close to Robin seemed to have ended up in the dungeons sooner or later.

"Before that," he says. "In the Holy Land, he, um….that is, I was his servant, but he freed me. Services rendered, and all." He chuckles ruefully. "I was to have the lodge at Bonchurch upon our return, but then Robin went and got himself made an outlaw."

She doesn't ask why that made a difference to Much, since he had already been freed. She knows better.

"So…I never quite felt freed, exactly. I mean to say, I wasn't his servant anymore, exactly, either, but the transition wasn't so pronounced, you know?"

"Everybody's a servant in the gang," she says, and he nods.

"Right. That's just it." He stirs the simmering stew and looks thoughtful.

"Is any of this at all to do with why you don't want your hat?"

"I suppose at first I wore it to emphasize the difference between us," he muses. "I suppose Robin didn't want me to keep doing that."

"If that's true, I suppose the only reason he didn't take the hat sooner was because he'd stopped seeing the differences."

Much blinks rapidly. "I like that. Thank you, Kate."

She cocks her head to one side and studies him, Robin's best friend. She had never thought about what he'd been before being an outlaw. Come right down to it, she had never spent much time thinking of Robin as a lord, either. The forest erased those classes of distinction and simplified everything into two categories: you were a good sort, or you weren't.

"There aren't so many of them," she adds. "Differences between you. Nothing important."

The look he gives her then reminds her strongly of Robin, back when he'd said things were complicated because of the lives they led, and because of Much. Maybe Robin really hadn't been imagining things that weren't there. Her heart catches, and it _is_ complicated, but not in an entirely bad way.

"I'm glad you didn't get that lodge at Bonchurch," she declares impulsively. "I'm glad of you."

She's known him for less than a year, seen him as a casual friend for most of that, but as Much answers her with a trace of his old smile, today Kate feels that good will come from ashes.


End file.
